‘You tried to kill MPs’: BJP MP to Sonia Gandhi over OBC push, cites 2012 fight
NEW DELHI,SEPT 20 : BJP MP Nishikant Dubey on Wednesday cited a clash between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party in the Lok Sabha in 2012 over a bill for reservation for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes to counter Sonia Gandhi who pushed for the quota for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the women’s reservation bill.
“In this same House, when V Narayanasamy was presenting a bill on promotional quota for SCs/STs, Samajwadi Party’s Yashvir Singh snatched the bill from his hand and tore it down. In this same Parliament, Madam Sonia Gandhi ji was the first to come and hold him by his collar,” he said.
“At that time, I told her you are not our dictator, not a queen, you cannot resort to violence,” said BJP’s Nishikant Dubey. “Mulayam Singh himself said the SP MPs would not have survived had the BJP not been there. You tried to kill the MPs,” he added.
In December 2012, Samajwadi Party member Yashvir Singh snatched a copy of the Constitution (117th Amendment) Bill from Narayanasamy in the Lok Sabha. The incident led to a commotion in the House. It triggered a war of words outside between the Congress and its ally SP, which strongly opposed the reservation in promotion for SCs and STs (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) in government jobs.
Extending her party’s support to the women’s reservation bill, Congress parliamentary party chief Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday demanded that the quota be implemented immediately and SC, ST, and OBC women also be given reservation following a caste census.
Initiating the debate on the bill from the opposition’s side, Gandhi said in the Lok Sabha that any delay in bringing the reservation into effect would be a “gross injustice” to Indian women.
The constitutional amendment bill was introduced in the Lower House on Tuesday. It was the first bill introduced in the new Parliament building.
The bill provides for 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. The reservation will come into effect only after the completion of the census and delimitation exercise.
-PTI
